Hi everyone, Regarding Angelo's questions and comments, I find that my one clone of Haemanthus albiflos some years produces a good crop of seeds, like this year; other years -- indeed, most years -- it produces none. In either case, I haven't intentionally hand-pollinated the albiflos. A year or so ago, I tried pollinating Haemanthus humilis hirsutus by itself, and got one seed. Pollinating the one clone of H. albiflos with hirsutus pollen produced maybe a dozen or more seeds -- but are they true hybrids or did the hirsutus pollen just stimulate an apomictic seed production? Maybe in 4 to 6 years, when some of them start to bloom, I'll be able to say. H. albiflos seedlings can be as hairy as hirsutus seedlings at this early stage of their growth, so a little hair on the leaves is not conclusive at the moment. I pollinated the hirsutus another time with fresh coccineus pollen, andvice versa. I got no seeds on the coccineus, but did get maybe a half dozen seeds on the hirsutus. Again, did I really get hybrids, or parthenogenic seeds of hirsutus? Although the chromosome number of Haemanthus is sometimes listed as n = 8 or 9, most of the numbers seem to be n = 8: H. albiflos, 2n = 16 H. coccineus, 2n = 16 from two references H. humilis hirsutus, 2n = 16 So these crosses, [albiflos X humilis hirsutus] and [humilis hirsutus X coccineus] are, at least on the face of things, compatible in chromosome counts. I had three plants of H. barkerae bloom this past season, all from the same batch of seeds from Rachel Saunders. I pollinated those three across each other and got no seeds at all. For H. barkerae, 2n = 16 also. This was the second time these barkerae had tried to bloom; the previous year, the scapes aborted just short of actual anthesis. Still, they may just be too small, to young, to support seed production. A very good question , Angelo. Regards, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA Member of INTERNATIONAL CLIVIA CO-OP